I Kiss Your Cup
by Newkirk's Heroes
Summary: Wow! My first HP story! Very short, and slash (SS/RL). Basically, Snape musing on Lupin. A poem-fic, actually, and the title is from Frank O'Hara's poem "I Kiss Your Cup". Anyway, I would really, really love it if you would read and review!! Thank you so


I Kiss Your Cup  
  
A/N: Yay! Wow…my first Harry Potter story! Well…I've been "secretly" reading the books for a while ("Secretly" because I made this big deal to all my HP-loving friends that "I would NEVER read those!"). And plus, we just got the movie and all…ah, anyway. So, please, PLEASE forgive me if I get things (such as characterization!) screwed up majorly, because I'm new to the whole genre, and this is just a rough first-attempt ^-^  
  
Summary: A short little slashy interlude in Book 3 (my favorite!) our favorite Potions Master is preparing a certain Mixture for another certain DADA Professor, while musing to himself. Oh! And this is based on a poem…so; it's sort of like, a poem-fic, instead of a songfic. Kind of odd, I know, but I was reading this poem, and it so echoed the scenario! I had to use it! Lol!   
  
Disclaimer: Oh, ya, it'd be nice to give some credit, eh? "I Kiss Your Cup" was written by the God of Poetry himself, Frank O'Hara! And the HP characters obviously don't belong to me (if they did I wouldn't have to work at my local General Store, selling faux-crystal angels to old ladies…), they belong to Ms. Rowling.   
  
(Ok, the intro is probably gonna be longer than the story *sighs*. Lets get on with it!)  
  
  
*I kiss your cup  
which will not be used again  
'till you come back*  
  
He likes being wrapped in the smoke that simmers upwards from the cauldron. He likes being in his own world. The potion itself smells utterly awful, but he has conditioned himself against unpleasant odors; as Potions Master, he has had to. But never mind the scent. It is enough, within the curling mists of the concoction, to pick out the myriad colors, the swirling shapes and indecipherable messages that could all be…  
  
Could all be his face.  
  
He blinks, but it is the same. Every single time, he blinks to ground himself, to get the smoke out of his onyx-pooled eyes, to become himself once again, but it never works. It really makes it worse. Because then even the room disappears, and all that is left in front of him is the light-imprint of churning silhouettes against his eyelids, and then…  
  
Then his face becomes clearer.  
  
He opens his eyes. He always feels warm, reddened almost, while mixing the Wolf's Bane. He often wonders if he is actually blushing, or if the heat is underneath his skin, inside of him, inside where no one can see, where he cannot even himself see. His eyes are black. Behind his eyes is black as well.  
  
Except for his face.  
  
Sighing, shaking his head, letting his black hair fly against his heated cheeks, he pours the steaming mixture into the goblet. It is always the same goblet, he makes certain of that, coming back into the room when he knows that the contents have been emptied, gathering the gilded cup into his hands, feeling the cool of the metal and imagining there is still a slight warmth there, where…  
  
Where his lips have touched it.   
  
There is that. There is always that, and he brings the smoking cup to his face, eye level, and imagines those brown eyes, soft and infinitely understanding, he imagines that golden-brown hair, flecked so poignantly and delicately with gray falling over that finely-detailed face. He sees it all. He has seen it so many times before, in his dreams. Always in his dreams.  
  
"Remus." He whispers. He likes the sound of the name. He needs the sound of the name. "Remus Lupin."   
  
He shakes his head, and molds his expression back to its usual dour state, and walks out of the Potions room, his long black cloak sweeping behind him, making silky little whisperings that, to him, always sound out that name.  
  
Remus Lupin.  
  
*Loud as a swan's transport  
is your voice  
amplified by the distance in your eyes*  
  
He hates the sadness.  
  
He waits outside the door, hoping that Remus has not heard him approach, hoping to any God that will listen that Remus does not suspect anything. He likes to wait outside the door, imagining what Remus is doing, how his face looks, how his hair has fallen, and the sadness in Remus' gentle eyes.  
  
But he hates the sadness.  
  
There is a dream: a dream that is like a Potion, that is like the smoke rising from the Wolf's Bane. In the dream he is holding Remus, he is whispering to Remus, and like tears the sadness falls from Remus' eyes. He wakes up from that dream very nearly crying sometimes. Maybe it is Remus' poignancy. Maybe that was what it always had been.  
  
How he had…how he had managed to hate him! As a boy…what he had wanted to do to Remus Lupin, how he had hated him along with Sirius Black and James Potter. But…but Remus had always been different from Sirius and James. Quiet. Not shy, like that intolerable Peter Pettigrew, but quiet. Gentle.  
  
Gentle.  
  
When Remus had come back, when he had heard that Remus was teaching, he had to act angry. He had to hate. It would look too suspicious for him, the demon of the Hogwarts faculty, to leap into the air, whoop with joy, and harness the sun in a fit of pure ecstasy when he found out that Remus Lupin, beautiful Remus Lupin, was coming back.  
  
So the hate. The infernal hate. It would almost be worth it…almost.  
  
Enough time has passed, and he glides, in his serpentine way, into the classroom.   
  
Remus is at his desk, reading from a student's parchment, but he looks up as soon as he enters. Remus' senses are better, he can hear, he can see, he can feel so much more. It is a curse, a horrible curse.  
  
He scowls. Remus expects his scowl. But Remus smiles and stands, and he is like a dancer. Remus is light and delicate, and the sun flashes off his sad eyes. Remus' distant eyes. He waits, shuddering inside. His voice will come next. His voice, as sad as his eyes, and lovely.   
  
"Good afternoon, Severus." Remus Lupin nods slightly.  
  
*Snow of thought  
I am on my back to you  
And my lids twitch*  
  
He wants to run to him, but he cannot. Severus Snape simply moves forward, serpentine, as per norm. And Remus sees him as a snake. They all do.  
  
"Here, Lupin." Severus thrusts the steaming goblet at Remus brusquely, as Remus would expect. Remus smiles again, soft, with a flick of wry amusement in his cocked eyebrow. A few strands of hair fall across his forehead, and Remus swipes them away abstractly with his free hand. All of a sudden, Severus wished that he could see Remus in the snow. His hair filled with snow, like delicate strands of crystal. But it is not winter yet. Not yet.  
  
"Thank you." Remus nods. He brings the cup to his lips, frowning in distaste at the smell. But he looks so eloquent! Severus has to hold his breath without holding it, has to smile without smiling, has to be in love without loving. Remus, holding the cup in a dazzle of afternoon sun, all the myriad pinpoints of light in his hair, his eyes, his lips. He would kiss like a dove, Severus decides. Like a dove.  
  
Remus drinks the mixture quickly, his lips against the cup, and Severus muses that if anyone were to touch him then, he would break apart into the shimmer of sun and air. He would burst into light.  
  
*I dreamt  
that I was mysteriously murdered  
with narcotics*  
  
And all too soon there is the metallic music of Remus placing the cup back down on the desk. The movement disturbs a quill pen, and it falls to the floor. Severus wonders, faintly, if he should move to pick it up, but before he can decide, Remus bends down and reaches for it. Severus watches, the catches of Remus' body playing against his threadbare robes, the shifting of his muscles, of his spine against the rough cloth as he bends, and Severus has to hold his hands behind his back, before he simply reaches out without knowing.   
  
Remus stands, a helpless and humorous smile playing on his lips. Severus feels that he could stand there forever. That moving does not matter, that breathing does not matter. Remus Lupin is right there. Remus Lupin is smiling.  
  
"Thank you." Remus repeats. Severus nods faintly, looking stern and angry and spiteful, but feeling like he is slowly dying of need. He grabs the cup as Remus turns back to his desk, and starts forward, out of the room.  
  
As he reaches the door, he looks back slightly, discretely, as he always does, one more time:  
  
But Remus is looking at him, and Severus is suddenly frightened. Remus tilts his head ever-so-slightly and smiles his soft, sad smile.  
  
"Eh, I shall be back…the next time you need it." Severus mumbles, trying to cover for himself. He is really thinking that if Remus suspects anything, if Remus thinks anything, then he will die. Just die, without even having to kill himself.   
  
"I know." Remus nods. His voice is music. Not music, because music is something that is made. Something produced. No, Remus' voice is air: is wind, something natural and beautiful and simply *there*. Something necessary. Severus feels that he must breath Remus' voice. That he needs it more than air. That he does not need air at all.  
  
Severus scowls at Remus and walks out of the room. He does not look back. He does not wish to risk it.  
  
*And the dust  
that makes a Rubens out of you  
makes me a serpent*  
  
Remus is a wolf, Severus thinks, and he would be, even if he was not a werewolf. Remus would be a wolf, nonetheless. Not dangerous; no, distant and lonely and lovely, part of the air and the night and fantasy. Severus slips back to his dungeon, thinking that Remus walks like a wolf, padding softly and deftly, a dancer without dancing, only with being.   
  
And he? Severus frowns and smiles in anger and hatred at himself. He would not be a wolf. No…he would be a snake. Of course, and he had cultivated that image. He had always wanted to be seen as…as dangerous.  
  
But, perhaps, predators (wolves) are not dangerous. No, Severus closes the door of his classroom behind him, thinking that neither wolf or snake is dangerous. Wolf is beauty and Remus. Snake is darkness and he.   
  
There is dust all over his desk. There is always dust in the dungeon, a buffer against the reality of touching things and feeling things and being. But not loving. No, Severus can love without touching. Seeing Remus is enough. Knowing that Remus is breathing above him, existing and smiling above him is enough for loving.  
  
Oh, but Severus needs so much more.  
  
He blows away the dust and sets the cup down. He stares at the golden goblet, which gathers no sunlight here, because there is none, in the dungeon, and Severus runs his thin fingers across the brim of the cup, still warm with the potion, still slightly moist and Severus wonders where, exactly, Remus' lips touched.   
  
He runs his fingers all the way around, not missing a spot, imagining himself anything but a snake, imagining himself a wolf like Remus, running alongside Remus in the frigid darkness of a snowy night, running with him and kissing him and…and…  
  
Severus stops.  
  
He brings his fingers to his lips. He kisses them softly, shuddering with pleasure at the warmth from the cup(from Remus really. Yes…oh from Remus) and shuddering with revulsion at his own, serpentine coldness.  
  
  
THE END!!  
  
Well!? How did you like it! I must admit, I was inspired to write by ShinigamiForever, and her HP stories are definitely better than anything I could write! Lol! But, anyway, please leave a review, and tell me if I should write anymore, or if I should sell all my HP stuff because I'm not worthy of having it in the same house as my pathetic, untalented self ^-^. Ah, I love self-deprecation, don't you?  
  
Thanks so much for reading (and hopefully reviewing!) 


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